the Jewish
Cabalists cannot be ignored. In Spain, Portugal, Provence, and Italy the
Jews by the fifteenth century had become a power; as early as 1450 they
had penetrated into the intellectual circles of Florence, and it was
also in Italy that, a century later, the modern Cabalistic school was
inaugurated by Isaac Luria (1533-72), whose doctrines were organized
into a practical system by the Hasidim of Eastern Europe for the writing
of amulets, the conjuration of devils, mystical jugglery with numbers
and letters, etc.[224] Italy in the fifteenth century was thus a centre
from which Cabalistic influences radiated, and it may be that the
Italians who indoctrinated Gilles de Rais had drawn their inspiration
from this source. Indeed Eliphas Levi, who certainly cannot be accused
of "Anti-Semitism," declares that "the Jews, the most faithful trustees
of the secret of the Cabala, were almost always the reat masters of
magic in the Middle Ages,"[225] and suggests that Gilles de Rais took
his monstrous recipes for using the blood of murdered children "from
some of those old Hebrew _grimoires_ (books on magic), which, if they
had been known, would have sufficed to hold up the Jews to the
execration of the whole earth."[226] Voltaire, in his _Henriade_,
likewise attributes the magical blood-rites practised in the sixteenth
century to Jewish inspiration:

Dans l'ombre de la nuit, sous une voute obscure,
Le silence conduit leui assemblee impure.
A la pale lueur d'un magique flambeau
S'eleve un vil autel dresse sur un tombeau.
C'est la que des deux rois on placa les images,
Objets de leur terreur, objets de leurs outrages.
Leurs sacrileges mains out mele sur l'autel
A des noms infernaux le nom de l'Eternel.
Sur ces murs tenebreux des lances sont rangees,
Dans des vases de sang leurs pointes sont plongees;
Appareil menacant de leur mystere affreux.
Le pretre de ce temple est un de ces Hebreux
Qui, proscrits sur la terre et citoyens du monde,
Portent de mers en mers leur misere profonde,
Et, d'un antique ramas de superstitions,
Out rempli des longtemps toutes les nations, etc.

Voltaire adds in a footnote: "It was ordinarily Jews that were made use
of for magical operations. This ancient superstition comes from the
secrets of the Cabala, of which the Jews called themselves the sole
depositaries. Catherine de Medicis, the Marechal d'Ancre, and many
others employed J